CONTINUOUSWAVE

I'm looking at a 1990 REVENGE 20 W-T.

this would be my second boat if I go through with it, and I'd sell my current one which is a 17' 1964 Glasspar Seafair sedan that I've restored and built a pilothouse atop.

The one I'm looking at would need work, there's no doubt. I checked it out once, and I'm trying to get one more appointment and ideally a sea trial. It shows some neglect, and I'm hoping those of you with lots of experience can help me see things that I don't yet know.

It has a bracket with a 225 optimax, don't know the make of the bracket (not whaler drive). I didn't take enough pics, but I'll show you what I have.

The rear deck is soft - the part that is screwed and caulked down - and I'd need to replace it, what I don't yet know is how sound the part of the deck that's glassed in is.

When you search the web there are a lot of people who tell you that if the foam is waterlogged it's useless, as I understand it the main ways to assess this is to weight it, but that it can be hard to accurately add up all the ancillaries and the trailer and end up with an accurate hull weight.

Checking how it sits in the water seems to be the next best thing.

Seems like fuel tank condition is a big consideration with a boat this age, but I'm not sure how I'd inspect this.

It seems that I could get it for about $8500, and I've been told that's too much for the amount of work it could be
.

Give me your thoughts. Thanks

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Well I have an appointment to do another look tomorrow, I'm going to see if we can do a sea trial.

Q1: In the corners here there are seating that don't look OEM to me, was this someone's handy work?

Q2: The deck portion closest to the stern in the photo is soft and I'd need to redo it, I saw that you can remove the old plywood and epoxy new plywood to the fiberglass, is this the preferred option rather than simply making a new panel?

Q3: Does anything else jump out to anyone?

To see what an REVENGE 20 W-T notched transom is supposed to look like go to

https://continuouswave.com/jimh/Revenge20WT/

There appears to be a lot of non-OEM stuff on your prospective buy.

A soft center deck is a big repair. Read the two-part article at

https://continuouswave.com/whaler/refer ... store.html

The boat was originally a notched transom. The full transom is someone’s modification. The bracket is not OEM. The hardtop is not OEM. All the teak is gone—but that might be the way it came as in c.1990 Boston Whaler was offering no-teak as an option. But that instrument panel is not OEM, so the missing teak is properly a similar situation.

Typically there is no aft deck on a notched transom model.

An OptiMax 225 is plenty of horsepower.

The early versions of the large displacement V6 OptiMax engines had problems. They are noisy engines. But powerful—when they are running properly. They are very complex engines, and finding a Mercury dealer today that works on them may be difficult. In many model years Boston Whaler did not sell the OptiMax as a pre-rigged engine because there was very little customer demand for them. That boat may have been re-powered with the OptiMax.

I like to buy used Boston Whaler boats that are a 9 or 10, then I try to keep them that way. Big restorations are for people who like to work on boats instead of using them on the water.

If the engine runs well and the fuel tank does not leak, the boat can be used, but it is always going to be a modified version of the original Boston Whaler REVENGE 20 W-T notched transom that came from the factory in 1990.

I am probably going to pass of this boat. It's just too much work and too many unknowns. The soft deck and rotting wood makes me suspect the transom modifications were done improperly. The work does actually look decent and the transom is solid, but still an unknown. It's a bummer, that's the ideal boat to me and having a bracket frees up deck space and makes for a nice platform to put a bait tank.

If I could get it for $5,000 I would buy it.

I ran the engine and could not get it to stay running after warming up, it would die when put back into idle, and the idle was erratic. The cause could have been bad fuel or injectors or spark who knows; it's another big unknown.

If [the fault] was just the deck I would be into it, as I can do fiberglass work.

Thanks for the information.